Posted
by
Soulskill
on Monday June 21, 2010 @01:50PM
from the my-tv-is-comcastic-enough-thanks dept.

GovTechGuy writes "A coalition of media companies, labor groups and privacy advocates have combined to urge the FCC to block the proposed merger of NBC Universal and cable giant Comcast. In a letter sent to the FCC Monday (PDF), the groups argue the new $30 billion entity would have unprecedented control over the media landscape, raising antitrust concerns. Among the threats listed are the potential for the new media giant to violate net neutrality and favor its own content both on television and online."

Yeah... it's like owning Park Place, Boardwalk, AND all the railroads at the same time. It sucks when it isn't you.:p

No, it's a lot worse than that. In Monopoly, when someone else owns a lot of valuable properties, at least it's another player who has the same goals you have, albeit adversarial. When your opponent makes money, although he takes it from you, it at least stays in the game and the rules don't change. Through smart play and careful management, you at least have a chance to get some of that back. There is still capital in the game. You can borrow, you can play.

When corporations own the same monopoly of say, all the railroads and both utilities, it changes the fundamental rules of the game. It doesn't just add to their holdings, it wrecks the game for everybody. They don't want to just beat you, they want to make it so that you can't ever play again. People tend to make some fundamental mistakes when thinking about corporations. They're not people. They're legal fictions with destruction of the market built into their fictional DNA. Their agenda is of a much different nature than yours or mine.

Well also there's the fact that Monopoly is... you know... a game. When someone owns Park Place, Boardwalk, and the railroads it simply "sucks when it isn't you". You were trying to do the same thing, because that's the point of the game. You're not worried about whether the railroads continue to provide good service to their customers, because that's not part of the game.

But what we're talking about here is telecommunications infrastructure and information dissemination. These are not simply entertain

These are essentially vital public services that we allow private companies to perform under the belief that private companies will do a better job.

Yes, that's the mythology of the free market zealots.

We've allowed them to take control of the discussion to the point where it's conventional wisdom that this nonexistent entity called the "free-market" is good and government is bad. Neither of those assertions is demonstrable, even if you could possibly find such a thing as a "free market" anywhere on earth,

We've allowed them to take control of the discussion to the point where it's conventional wisdom that this nonexistent entity called the "free-market" is good and government is bad.

Yes. The problem there is, they're not *exactly* flat-out wrong. A real free market is not necessarily absolutely "free", basically a situation where a consumer has real valid choices between multiple competing vendors. Very often, giving consumers real choice allows for greater economic efficiency than having any kind of central authority make economic choices for everyone.

There are a couple problems, though. First, very often, the vendors will seek to limit the choices of the consumers, thereby subverting the supposed "free-market forces". This is most obvious in cases where a monopoly or cartel is able to arbitrarily set prices for necessary goods, but it happens in other more subtle ways.

Second, though the "free market" is often more efficient, there may be cases where "efficiency" is not the chief concern. It can be "more efficient" to ignore safety standards in manufacturing. It can be "more efficient" for the police to simply arrest and jail whoever they think is guilty, without need of evidence or a trial.

I like free markets, but I'm also in favor of good government. The "free market" is a method we use to organize ourselves in order to produce cheap stuff, but "government" is a method we use to organize ourselves to ensure our lives have safety and justice.

Second, though the "free market" is often more efficient, there may be cases where "efficiency" is not the chief concern. It can be "more efficient" to ignore safety standards in manufacturing. It can be "more efficient" for the police to simply arrest and jail whoever they think is guilty, without need of evidence or a trial.

All markets exist inside some kind of regulatory framework, even if it's only laws against fraud. The free market is the most efficient way to deliver goods and services inside that r

Actually, if you've ever played Monopoly and gotten to the point where someone else owns Park Place, Boardwalk, and all the railroads, you're pretty much screwed, which sounds *exactly* like real life. You could also equivocate losing with "wrecking the game", since the game reaches a certain point where it cannot continue (and there's only one winner). Also, it doesn't take much to destroy the "smart play and careful management" approach, either, since your piece moves at the whim of the dice. I do agree,

They're legal fictions with destruction of the market built into their fictional DNA.

No. On two county. They're not legal fictions; legally, and by no other measure do they exist. They're programmed to try to maximize all profits within the bounds of the law(sometimes that last part gets away from them), the destruction of markets is just a side-effect.

I replied elsewhere about this stating that Time Warner just spun off their internet divisions (Time Warner Cable and AOL) and their cable divison (Time Warner Cable).

Afterwards, I did a quick lookup on Wikipedia, and based on what's there it seems controlling both content and distribution is a far more commonplace practice than most people realize. Sure, it's usually through subsidaries and no one company has a 100% controlling stake, but it seems that all of the content companies are or have been in bed w

The rules change when you are talking about monopolies and other powerful companies. People tend to not worry about Valve's integration because they are small enough to not need to worry about. Comcast and NBC on the other hand are two very large companies with significant power behind them. When you get to that scale, they start behaving more like landless states then private companies, and thus governments need to treat them as such.

"Fox and Cox" is pretty funny! But FOX has been linked up with multichannel programming providers before.

NewsCorp (which owns the FOX Broadcasting Corporation) already has a 39% stake in BSkyB. Before 2008, NewsCorp held a managing interest in The DirecTV Group (which has now been sold off to Liberty Media). NewsCorp also has a 25% interest in Foxtel (Australia), a 44% interest in SKY Network Television New Zealand, a 45% interest in Sky Deutschland, a 20% interest in Tata Sky (India), as well as outrigh

Personally, I only use one from that particular list (SciFi), and I wouldn't care too much if I lost it. Regardless, I'm still very concerned about NBC-Comcast because of the dangerous precedent it might set. If the merger went through and NBC-Comcast was able to start favoring its own content (even in a small way), you know it would only be a matter of time until Time Warner and such start making similar deals. By then, it may be too late to stop without turning the market upside-down.

Turning the market upside-down may not be a bad thing, but I'd hate to have to find out that way.

Time Warner already had such a vertical monopoly. Time Warner Cable (Road Runner), AOL, Warner Brothers (WB/CW), Turner (CNN, TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network), and HBO were at one time all divisions of Time Warner.

But interestingly enough, both Time Warner Cable and AOL got spun off in the past few years. Universal/NBC may yet be a disaster for both companies. It probably won't be the disaster that was AOL-Time Warner merger, but I'm not sure it's going to end well...

Ok, I'm comfortable with the fact that SOME people watch the Olympics and enjoy it. That's all fine and good. I definately find it odd though that you'd state it like it's a given that someone just couldn't miss the Olympics. Of the people I know, 9 out of 10 really just don't give a shit about the Olympics. Even the people who are into (mainstream) sports.

Well, after the last season in the franchise [wikipedia.org], I don't either. I have better things to do with my time than watch a bunch of pseudo-retarded drama queens run around on a spaceship and cry together. Fucking fail.

AP and Reuters represent an indirect effect. Both organizations sell their content to downstream providers like many of the sub companies owned by NBC. As NBC/Comcast become more powerful, they become larger consumers of what AP/Reuters put out. Once a downstream becomes powerful enough, they can start exerting pressure upward on content and focus, or potentially (if they find another source they prefer) cut them out and reduce their exposure, which reduces their funding/strength, which results in wors

So you're among the very few people who exist on the internet who don't access any of the regular forms of entertainment. Even I don't watch TV but given the movies I've SEEN in my lifetime let alone what I may want to see in the future, its nearly impossible to miss universal studios. Even if I had somehow managed to dodge every VCR, DVD, and Blu-ray in the world and never visitted a movie theatre I would have somehow played one of the video games loosely based off of one of their movies.

And all of its really a moot point though - even if YOU aren't DIRECTLY affected, perhaps half of your friends are affected by NBC and with anti-trust media practices you'll get very 1 sided opinions forming, so you'll either have to ditch half your friends for being narrow minded, or you'll have to be annoyed by your friends every time they're around, or you and your friends will become the social outcasts of society. You know the kinds, who don't work well with others in the work-place because they can't talk about current events and if they do, they upset other people when they tell them they are wrong, and it won't matter if you're right because your manager will get pissed that you are refuting the very facts they believe coming from their "trusted source". It's like if you don't jump on board you're "That guy" that no one wants to invite out to lunch.

However, if you live under a rock, like to play chess by yourself by torchlight, and only visit the internet by tapping binary into a magnetic rock that sends signals to an access point, than you probably won't be affected by this merger too much.

Oh, so very, very wrong. I don't watch movies because most of them just aren't interesting to me. I will watch the occasional Pixar film just to see what they're doing with computer animation. I'll also watch documentaries. As for TV, I watch other shows, I've just not seen anything on any of the mentioned NBC-owned channels that's grabbed my attention. I'd trade FOX for NBC in a heartbeat if I could, but FOX is the only source of F1 racing in the states, so I'm stuck watching some of that network's st

Uhhhh...this is/. which is a geek site. Why would ANYONE here own something as primitive as a TV? We got big ass flat panel monitors baby, yeah! Just plug in that USB TV tuner or use that big fat Internet pipe, and voila! TVs are for grandmas pal, get with the 21st century!

Many people who are customer of Comast are out of necessity, not choice. All the same, it has a couple of implications for non-customers with an overriding theme of big media maintaining their control on culture distribution.

Prior to the Internet broadcast video content had something of a natural monopoly simply by the limited bandwidth over the airwaves. The Internet has a lot of potential to change that because it doesn't suffer from the same limitation. I consume a great deal of "TV Show" like cont

While I make very little use of the content that NBC provides, I am a Comcast customer. I really do not like that Comcast is both a service provider and a content provider. I am not happy that the precedent was set with Time-Warner. I would like to see the roles of content provider and service provider separated. Unfortunately, I have little confidence in government regulation accomplishing that in a way that is consumer friendly.

I vote to let it happen and then watch it fail. It may take a few years, but it will most certainly fail. If history is any indication, the bigger companies get the more out of touch they get with their customers and the more fragile their success becomes.

But if you control the entire entertainment and delivery vertical for a population that has only one choice in delivery, then there is no need to be in touch with your customer. Remember ATT? "We're the phone company, we don't have to care."

Until a vocal majority of people stand up to oppose mega corporations they will continue to exist and thrive. The only way, or so it seems at least, to motivate people into action is putting them into a position of desperation. The sooner that happens the better.

Comcast is already so out of touch with their customers. They recently started advertising about how nice their installers are and how they wear booties over the boots on your carpet. They have never done this, until AT&T started doing it and competing head-to-head in their market with U-verse.

What totally pisses me off and sends me into a blind rage is the Ben and Shaq commercials. I would love to know how much those douchebags are getting paid (adding to my cable bill). I've been thinking of wri

And Comcast IS the web for a lot of people. See where this is going? The goal is to create an entertainment monopoly by leveraging a communications monopoly (or frequently, a duopoly). And the communications monopoly being a natural monopoly, it's quite possible to make that happen.

The sheer size of a company doesn't neccessarily make it fail, and may even be a benefit under certain conditions. What helped kill companies like the mega TW-AOL merger is making a huge company out of such dissimilar parts and cultures. TW both overestimated and didn't understand the value of AOL, nor of the Internet at all. It looked good on a balance sheet, but didn't work well in real life. Compare this to a company like Boeing that buys a competitor (McDonnell-Douglas for example). It's one airplane ma

They are be a monopoly in some areas. Only one cable company gets control of the wires in a certain area.

Here in the US, a person usually has two choices, perhaps if lucky 3, perhaps if unlucky, none: Cable, DSL, or WiMax. Switching may not be an option. So, it may be that people get Comcast or dialup.

I might not spy monopoly, but I can see collusion happening. Get another ISP and then start charging for bandwidth. Unless the site is a "premium" site. Guess what? People will get worried if they exce

TW both overestimated and didn't understand the value of AOL, nor of the Internet at all. It looked good on a balance sheet, but didn't work well in real life.

AOL bought Time-Warner, not the other way around. AOL bought TW when AOL was on the top of its game, but everybody could see the writing on the wall. At the time, TW was struggling, it was heavily invested in print media, where revenues were falling precipitously. AOL thought they could use TW's content to save themselves. It is not clear to me if AOL failed to obtain sufficient control over TW with the purchase to execute its plan, or if AOL just didn't have a clear plan in the first place. However, even t

They apparently think that a glorified letter-writing campaign is a match for the lobbying (aka "bribing") money that a major corporation can throw at Washington. That's almost as adorable as an environmentalist in Texas or Alaska writing his Congressman asking him to oppose big oil. Even if you could get the FCC to listen, the lobbyists would just get their slaves in Congress to override them (just like they did [cnet.com] on net neutrality).

Well if 90% of people are against something and lobbyists do buy votes and the voters are angry enough they can vote the representative out of office, something money can't do directly, and he will no longer be in a position to take bribes. Once you think you have no power you're right.

well since he is dead he might actually be a good politician. Would his corpse have to be found so that it could sit in office? Joke aside you only need 50% +1 to agree that a candidate is the best option. Less than that with alternative voting methods.

Yeah, but it represents a very asymetric situation. It takes a huge percentage of voters to override the influence of what is essentially a few hundred people. Esp when those few hundred people ALSO control the primary mechanisms at raising awareness/urgency of an issue, i.e. media access.

It does represent a asymmetric situation but what is not equal is time. Companies have people who work full time understanding the issues at hand your average citizen doesn't. So either make everyone pay attention or appoint official political analysts that work full time to understand the issues at hand and how they affect the public. Maybe you could even elect them? recurse. Either way you can't say ooh its too hard or I'm tired you have to pay attention and chose politicians that you feel are respon

Well if 90% of people are against something and lobbyists do buy votes and the voters are angry enough they can vote the representative out of office, something money can't do directly, and he will no longer be in a position to take bribes.

Well that's true, but I think you're underestimating how game-changing the words "angry enough" really are. In addition to how hard it is to get 90% of people to think one way about an issue, there are a few other problems with that fact in practice:

One of the Commission’s notable challenges was against the consummated merger of Polypore International and Microporous Products in which the Commission asserted that the February 2008 acquisition reduced competition and raised prices in the markets for multiple types of battery separator film used in the power supplies of various vehicles and in battery backup generators. The Commission also challenged and effectively blocked the proposed merger of

Comcast Sports Net Chicago / Comcast Sports Net Chicago + and + 2 is good but that is the only comcast channel that spend much time viewing comcast only owns 20% of it. I did see the NHL plays offs on VS but that is small next to most of the other carp on that channel. G4 has some good VOD stuff but Comcarp killed most of the good stuff there.

Given Comcast's strong anti-net neutrality stance and propsensity towards censorship, I agree with the FCC. The merger should be blocked because it does not serve a really good purpose. It just creates a giant media conglomerate with far reaching arms into government. Comcast and NBC Universal should remain separate entities.

The merger should be blocked because it does not serve a really good purpose.

Erm, what? I think the merger should be blocked, too, but not because "it does not serve a really good purpose". People and corporations do a lot of things that seem rather dumb to me, but I find the idea of stopping them on that reason alone to be pretty scary.

And there's another good reason for this: it's often by far the highest-rated NFL game of the week. And NBC doesn't have a decent cable network to dump it to, either, unless they want it on USA Network.

Once upon a time, movie studios made movies. People had to go to a movie theater to see those movies. The great grandfathers of the current RIAA thought it great to have a system where the studios owned the movies and the theaters. This was good as there was no issue of splitting receipts with the movie house or worrying about that movie house showing someone else's movies (film being open source). At some point, the movie makers were forced to sell off the "tied houses" and since then, there has been a

Quebecor, one of the largest media company owns Many papers, about 90% of all stand magazines, a TV network and the largest cable company in the province (Videotron). So when the owner's girlfriend has a new show, it's on cell phones, in all the media, on TV, on the ISP's home page, so on. They can control the information. All the news come from the same source, their own press agency. Even worse, about every of their companies have been/are/will be in a lock-out. Of course, since they own about every media